You're Fired

You're Fired

You're Fired

I don’t talk to Alex very often (once in the past two months, to be exact). But when we do speak, we stick to the basics. We talk about family, friends, work—everything except each other's love lives. Of course, that’s the one thing I’m really curious about. Whenever I’m talking to him, I always have to stop myself just short of asking the elephant-in-the-room questions: “Are you seeing anyone? Have you met anyone new? How many girls have you dated since we broke up? Did you really like any of them? How serious were they?” The list goes on.

Even though I’m dying to know what’s going on in his love life, I’ll never ask. Partly because the universal-but-unspoken Breakup Rules forbid it. But mostly because asking would mean the total abandonment of my sanity. What I don’t know can’t hurt me, right? If I found out he was seeing someone, it’d only open a can of worms with more queries: Who is she? Do I know her? Do you like her more than me? Is she pretty? Is she smart? She’s probably ugly and stupid—I really hope she’s ugly and stupid... Again, this list goes on and on.

I don’t even care that much, really. The rational part of me knows he’s gone out with other people since we broke up, just like I have. This is morbid curiosity, plain and simple. Let’s say I asked, and he told me he’s dating someone new—it wouldn’t help me to hear it. I’d never think she was good enough to fill my shoes. Essentially, I believe no one out there can love him better than I did. I put my heart and soul into loving that man—who is someone else to come along and decide she can do a better job?

When you tell a person, “I don’t think we should be together anymore,” you’re essentially saying, “I believe someone else can love me better than you can.” You’re firing your other half and admitting that you need to either find a replacement or do the job yourself, because they’re just not cutting it anymore.

When Alex and I broke up, I believed wholeheartedly that someone else could love me better than he could, and I still do. Of course, if I had thought Alex was the one person out there who could give me all the love I needed and deserved, well then, I would have stayed right there with him. I never would have wanted to end it in the first place.

Unfortunately, the flip side to this is the fact that some other girl can theoretically love Alex better than I can. To put it simply, that sucks. I think it’s human nature to be territorial, and I’ll admit—Alex belonged to me. And despite the breakup and the fact that, yes, I know he’s technically no longer “mine,” it still feels like part of him belongs to me. In any case, he definitely does NOT belong to some hussy out there trying to love him more than I did.

The idea of another woman looking into his eyes and seeing the same person I used to see, kissing him with the same passion I used to have, and opening her heart up to him the way I once did—it’s enough to drive a girl mad. For sanity’s sake, I'm going to keep pretending Alex will never date anyone else, ever again, for as long as he lives. I’ll take blissfully ignorant over agonizingly wise any day, thank you very much.

This article was originally published at . Reprinted with permission from the author.